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Wayne Bremser’s Last Roll of Kodachrome

When the final roll of Kodachrome was processed I put out an inquiry on Facebook and Twitter wondering who was shooting a final roll for themselves. I received a few responses, one coming from Wayne Bremser. He sent me a contact sheet. I made an edit, and he added a few words. Consider this the LPV tribute to the end of Kodachrome. You can view more of Wayne’s work on Flickr and also be sure to check out his Tumblr which features photography he’s looking at.

Last year I was primarily shooting Rolleiflex with black and white film. But I had accumulated a bunch of Kodachrome. When they announced the processing for Kodachrome would stop, I didn’t want to make every shot precious, but I did have certain light and colors in mind. I wasn’t going to create any project, just go around the city with the camera. I looked again at a few photographers that used it masterfully, like Saul Leiter (Early Color), Sam Abell (Life of a Photograph) and Fred Herzog. A new book by Inge Morath (First Color) came out, which I assume is mostly Kodachrome iso 25. She seemed very aware of the density of the film (maybe this is from seeing it projected), you could capture wider shots and retain detail in 35mm.

Shooting with this film, I found myself gravitating towards the subject of nostalgia, in the form of a mix of nice vintage objects (a lamp in our apartment) and discarded trash (an electric IBM on the street). Translating real color to Kodachrome color was a valuable photographic lesson, now available only by studying photos made with it. We tend to think of nostalgia as decades ago, but in Kodachrome 2010 and 1965 are equally unreachable.

About

The LPV Show is a podcast about photography and photobooks. Hosted by Bryan Formhals
LPV Magainze (2007-2013) was an online and print publication dedicated to contemporary documentary and fine art photography.